Deleting Photos/Clearing Recently Deleted Does Not Free Up Space - Other Storage Goes Up

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Deleting Photos/Clearing Recently Deleted Does Not Free Up Space - Other Storage Goes Up

First, I'll say that I'm a bit of a photo hoarder and I have thousands of photos and videos I've taken on my 256 GB iPhone X, iOS13.4. My procrastination in freeing up space mostly has to do with the myriad issues I've had trying to transfer photos from my iPhone X to my PC over time.

I have deleted thousands of photos and hundreds of videos over the past couple days and cleared out the recently deleted folder, yet the available storage barely budges. At first I thought this might be an issue of the "phantom photos" people have mentioned in the Recently Deleted folder, and I tried the date change solution - many times - but this did not help.

Recently I noticed, though, that after some lag, the storage taken up by Photos does drop. (Although not as much as I would expect. After my most recent export, exporting and deleting 527 images and videos, which amounted to 3.5 GB in HEIC files, and I don't think that includes the videos, the storage taken up by photos only dropped by 1.8 GB, although perhaps this is just compression at work? I have deleted much more than this in the past couple days. This is just the most recent iteration.)

However, whatever I free up with Photo storage, I lose in "Other" storage. Again referring to the 527 images/videos I most recently cleared off, Photo storage dropped from 157.07 GB to 155.23 GB, but "Other" storage used increased from 26.4 GB to 28.23 GB at the same time. So, yeah, available storage has remained the same after deleting thousands of pictures and hundreds of videos. Although, when I delete apps, podcasts, etc, I notice an immediate increase in available storage.

I am really hoping that there is a solution to this that does not involve restoring my entire phone, but any advice would greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

iPhone X

Posted on Apr 4, 2020 3:50 PM

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Answer 1

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lobsterghost1

Level 10

153,548 points

Apr 4, 2020 3:59 PM in response to Rainesong

Your other category is too high, which often happens when something becomes corrupt. The best method to help yourself would be to do a backup then restore. The most complete way is to use your home computer with iTunes, but over the air works as well. See this link for directlys --> Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup - Apple Support

Since you are a photo hoarder as you say, you should give serious consideration to using a free photo cloud platform, like Google or Amazon photos. My iCloud photos automatically save to my laptop, then I also use a paid cloud storage system with Carbonite, in addition to Google and Amazon photos to ensure I will never lose photos. I also use an external SSD drive to backup my photos to.

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Answer 2

Rainesong Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 5, 2020 7:06 AM in response to lobsterghost1

I backed up everything overnight, and I did my best to ensure that the backup contained what I needed. I was all ready to go after researching what gets saved and lost when I got this message before I started the backup:

There is no mention of photos, which I do want to be restored onto my phone. I had previously read that photos do get restored, as long as they were taken on the phone itself. When I searched for the specific message above, I did read a response more or less ignoring the fact that "photos" was omitted from this message, saying that yes, photos do get restored.

But I just want to be absolutely sure that photos will be restored before I press the button... If anyone could put my mind at ease I would be grateful!

Thank you!

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Answer 3

Apr 5, 2020 7:14 AM in response to Rainesong

On your iPhone go to Settings > Your Name, iCloud, Apple ID, iTunes & App Store > iCloud

Do you have iCloud Photos turned on? Check to make sure this is on. Photos won't be in the backup if they are in the cloud. Once you restore your phone, you make sure it is turned on on the phone and all your photos will sync back to your phone.

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Answer 4

Rainesong Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 5, 2020 7:18 AM in response to lobsterghost1

In iCloud, Photos is "On," but I only have 5 GB of storage on iCloud, which filled up years ago. I have 160 GB of photos/videos on my phone.

How will this affect what gets restored?

(Using iMazing, I was able to peek into the backup and see that my photos were there.)

Thank you.

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Answer 5

Apr 5, 2020 7:23 AM in response to Rainesong

If I were you, I'd buy iCloud storage before you do anything and make sure your photos are stored in the cloud. I cannot guarantee you won't lose photos. It you get 200GB of iCloud storage for $2.99/month. If you increase your iCloud storage, you'll need to give enough time for all your photos to sync.

If you don't want to do that, you really need to make sure you are storing your photos somewhere, other than just your phone.

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Answer 6

Rainesong Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 4, 2020 4:22 PM in response to lobsterghost1

Thank you so much. I suspected that Other was too high. I will give all of this a shot.

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Deleting Photos/Clearing Recently Deleted Does Not Free Up Space - Other Storage Goes Up

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